Big 12 Football: 3 PAC-12 schools that benefit from joining the conference

2) PAC-12 teams that would benefit from joining Big 12 football: Arizona State

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the near future of the Arizona State Sun Devils football program. Former New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Herm Edwards did instill some level of stability in Tempe, thus bringing more short-term success to the program. But the pieces are in place to find more sustainable success too.

With the way that Arizona State is recruiting right now compared to throughout most of the 2010’s, they could be a dark horse contender in the PAC-12 for a good while heading into the early 2020’s. They also have a young and promising quarterback in rising sophomore and former highly touted four-star dual-threat recruit Jayden Daniels that could be good for a long time.

It was anticipated that Arizona State would be a borderline top 25 team heading into the 2020 season. And then the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in almost every area of life in the last six months at the very least.

Nonetheless, Arizona State could still be a really interesting team when they do take the field in PAC-12 play this fall. They bring back most of their starters from an eight win team last year, and could at least be a contender to make the PAC-12 Championship Game over the likes of the USC Trojans, Utah Utes, etc. in the south division.

Landing the combination of Arizona and Arizona State would be two big gets for the Big 12, while adding the potential to cleanly split geographically into two divisions. This would have to be a package deal for it to be best for both the Big 12 and the Arizona schools.